Masterpiece of the Week TalkDaily through December 21, 20084 pmMuseum Galleries, Getty Center

This 15-minute gallery talk offers an in-depth look at one object. This week the featured work of art is Portrait of Camillo Rospigliosi attributed to Giovanni Battista Calandra. Meet at the Museum Information Desk.

Enjoy a one-hour tour focusing on the Getty's baroque and rococo collections by exploring the art and culture of these related and distinctive historic periods of the 17th- and 18th-centuries. Meet at the Museum Information Desk.

Internationally recognized video artist Nicole Cohen (American, b. 1970) explores the intersection of historical interiors, the social behaviors they conditioned, contemporary popular culture, and fantasy. Her project for the Getty Museum focuses on the Museum's collection of French seating furniture and its original and museological contexts. Viewers are invited to engage in a participatory experience, forming personal, imaginative narratives through video projections that render the chairs virtually accessible.

Tango with Cows: Book Art of the Russian Avant-Garde, 1910–1917Daily through April 19, 2009Research Institute Exhibition Gallery, Getty Center

Drawing principally from the Getty Research Institute's superb collection of Russian modernist books, Tango with Cows: Book Art of the Russian Avant-Garde, 1910–1917 brings into focus a brief, but tumultuous period when Russian visual artists and poets, including Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Kazimir Malevich, Alexei Kruchenykh, and Velimir Khlebnikov, challenged Symbolism and revolutionized book art. They fabricated pocket-sized, hand-lithographed books and juxtaposed primitive and abstract imagery with a transrational poetry they called zaum'("beyonsense"). The exhibition traces the avant-garde's use of the materials of their book art—imagery, language and its sounds, design, graphic technique—to convey humor, parody, and an intriguing ambivalence and apprehension about Russia's past, present, and future.

In Focus: The LandscapeDaily through January 11, 2009Center for Photographs, Getty Center

Like painters and draftsmen before them, photographers turned to the landscape as a source of inspiration after the invention of the medium was announced in 1839. Since then, changing artistic movements and continual technical advancements have provided opportunities for camera artists to approach the subject in diverse and imaginative ways. This exhibition, which is drawn exclusively from the Getty's collection, brings together the work of over 25 innovative photographers who have left their mark on the history of the genre, including Gustave Le Gray, Alfred Stieglitz, and Robert Adams.

Dialogue among Giants: Carleton Watkins and the Rise of Photography in CaliforniaDaily through March 1, 2009Center for Photographs, Getty Center

Dialogue among Giants presents the photographs of Carleton Watkins (American, 1829–1916) in the context of the birth and evolution of photography in California. The exhibition considers the social, political, economic, and artistic developments in California between the time of statehood in 1850 and the mid-1880s. It includes approximately 150 works, from daguerreotypes by unknown makers to mammoth-plate photographs by Watkins and his contemporaries.

The Belles Heures of the Duke of BerryDaily through February 8, 2009Museum Galleries, Getty Center

The Belles Heures of John, Duke of Berry is one of the most beloved books of the Middle Ages and one of the most sumptuous. Painted by the Limbourg brothers when the art of manuscript illumination in France reached new heights of elegance and sophistication, the book, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will be presented with its individual leaves unbound. The resulting display offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the visitor to walk through the book to view all of its major miniatures, a unique gallery of paintings of sublime beauty.

In the late sixteenth century, a small group of artists from Bologna changed the course of art history. This exhibition tells the extraordinary story of the Carracci family, who reinvigorated the art of painting with tremendous energy and vitality. Their achievement set standards that remained authoritative for more than two centuries. A selection of key works by the Carracci and their followers brings this artistic triumph to life. Twenty-seven of them—most never exhibited before in North America—are on loan from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, one of the world's premier collections of old master paintings. This exhibition has been co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

During the late 1700s and early 1800s European artists made a formal practice of working outdoors in the clear, pure light of the Italian countryside, transcribing the atmosphere and depth of picturesque landscape views. Originally intended as studies for more formal, idealized studio paintings, the sketches they created are today considered highly satisfying works of art in their own right. This concise survey exhibition features recent acquisitions by artists such as Jean-Victor Bertin, Jean-Joseph Xavier Bidauld, Camille Corot, Simon Denis, and Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, supplemented by loans from local collections.

Enjoy the Getty Villa on a day when it is closed to the public. Sharpen your drawing skills by looking closely at art objects in the galleries, as well as at the architecture and gardens. Skilled artists provide guidance; all experience levels welcome. Course fee $20. Open to 15 participants.